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Young athlete’s run cut short by Regent Park shooting

A memorial with flowers, candles and a football lie under a tree in tribute to Tyson Bailey, 15 years old, who was fatally shot on Jan. 19, 2013. (VINCE TALOTTA / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

By Ben Rayner and Jennifer PagliaroStaff Reporters

Sun., Jan. 20, 2013

Young Tyson Bailey was a “great kid” and a raw talent rising through the ranks of the Central Technical School football squad until his life and promising sporting career were senselessly cut short by a gunman in the stairwell of a Regent Park highrise.

Bailey, 15, was found bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds on the 13th floor of an apartment tower at 605 Whiteside Pl. around 2 p.m. Friday after several emergency calls were made to 911.

Rescue crews — who had to scale 12 flights of stairs to get to the injured teen when the building’s elevators got stuck on separate floors — managed to whisk Bailey to St. Michael’s Hospital, but he died of his wounds shortly thereafter.

On Saturday, his shocked former football coaches at Central Tech had nothing but good things to say about the fleet ball-carrier known to his friends as “TB”.

“He was a great kid,” said Norman Davis, head coach of the school’s junior football team, audibly choking back tears. “I’m pretty stunned. I’m pretty messed up about it, I have to say. . . . We’re all pretty much in shock.”

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Davis recalled Bailey, his starting running back, as “a diamond-in-the-rough kind of kid” with an infectious smile and mischievous spirit.

“He was a bit of a pain in the ass, but he was charming,” Davis laughed. “Inside you knew he was a good kid.

“He worked so friggin’ hard. This was one of the good kids. He was getting his credits, he was going to school. He still had a little bit of attitude because he was a kid, right? But with football he had something he loved to do. And then this happens.”

Both Davis and the team’s offensive co-ordinator, Steven Vitorino, were quick to share the story of one of Bailey’s more awe-inspiring turns on the gridiron, which came during the second quarter of the fourth game of the past season pitting Etobicoke Collegiate Institute against Central Tech’s Junior Blues.

Kids from Regent Park had gathered in the stands to watch their hometown boy try to turn it around. Bailey, a Grade 10 student and the team’s star running back, was on the field as one of a handful of players selected as a team captain.

“He wants the ball in his hands, he’s that type of player,” said Vitorino. “He was just one of those guys who would push everyone to be better. . . . He wasn’t ashamed to say he was from Regent Park.”

At the one-yard line, Bailey had a lot of ground to cover — but he was fast, what his coach called a “home-run hitter.”

When the play broke, Bailey went diving up the middle, sprinting all 99 yards in one straight line while fending off tackles to take it “straight to the house.” His team — which had a dismal 0-5 year the previous year — would go on to win the game 18-7 and finish the season 3-3 with a playoff spot.

“Nobody liked winning better than him,” Vitorino said. “He was going to go places. . . . He could have been special.”

Vitorino said the Metro Toronto Wildcats were looking to recruit Bailey, who he remembers as always laughing and smiling, for a summer team.

Last season, he was named offensive MVP and would have received an Iron Man award for never missing a practice. At Central Tech, students must attend class to be eligible for games, and Bailey was never on the bench, his coach said.

Vitorino said he hopes to give the awards to Bailey’s mother at the school’s Athletics’ Banquet in June and dedicate next season to the former player.

“He was a really good kid,” Vitorino said. “He was a crucial part of our team.”

Bailey didn’t live in the Whiteside Pl. apartment building where he was attacked, but on Saturday a modest memorial had been erected to him in the small front courtyard.

A hand-lettered sign reading “REST EASY, SWEET TB” had been affixed to a tree, covered in fond words of remembrance for Toronto’s second homicide victim of 2013. A yellow balloon bobbed forlornly in the wind above it while a couple of police cruisers and TV news trucks looked on.

A sister who goes by the Twitter handle of @shannie_boo, meanwhile, spent the day posting heartbreaking, minute-by-minute expressions of her deep loss. “I cryed (sic) so much that tears won’t even come out anymore,” went one Tweet. “My dear brother why did they have to do you like that,” went another. Yet another still put it simply and devastatingly: “I want my brother here with me.”

Police have yet to make an arrest in the case and say they are looking for two persons of interest. One is described as a white man, 25 to 30 years old, tall and skinny with acne on his face. The second is a black man, also 25 to 30, short and wearing a thick black jacket.

Details also remain muddy as to why emergency workers were unable to take either of the building’s elevators up to the 13th floor — or if indeed the crucial seconds lost in getting to Bailey by the stairs could have affected his chances for survival.

The elevators were in good working order at the time, insists Toronto Community Housing.

“We’ve been doing our best to get to the bottom of what happened . . . and based on the information that we have available at this time I can confirm that on Friday both elevators at 605 Whiteside Pl. were working properly,” said spokeswoman Sara Goldvine. “The elevators were working and they continue to be working fine, so any issues with the elevators would not be due to technological problems.”

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